In the electrical utilities industry, maintaining cable integrity may be critical. A loss of cable integrity, for example, a short circuit in a high voltage cable, may result in a crippling power outage or, even worse, a loss of life. One everyday task that may pose a great threat to cable integrity is the formation of electrical connections.
When electrical connections are formed, a bare metal surface may be exposed such as a splice connector or termination. These bare metal surfaces may be particularly hazardous when formed in the field where they are exposed to the environment. This environment may include rocks and other sharp objects as well as moisture when the connection is to be buried under ground and rainfall when the connection is to be suspended in the air. Thus, there is a need to protect such electrical connections from the environment.
In order to protect the electrical connection (e.g., cable(s) and connector) from the environment (e.g., moisture) and to protect technicians from the electrically energized components, joint or termination cover sleeve systems are employed. Typically, the cover sleeve system includes a relatively stiff push-on sleeve (e.g., a straight tube or elbow) formed of EPDM rubber and a plurality of push-on cable adapters having a given outer diameter and different inner diameters. The sleeve has an effectively fixed inner diameter and a cable adapter of appropriate outer diameter is selected to build up the outer diameter of the cable to suitably fit the inner diameter of the sleeve. The cable adapter is forcibly pushed onto the cable and the sleeve is forcibly pushed onto the cable adapter and the connector to span the connection and overlap the insulation layers of the cable and the connector.
Cover sleeve systems as described can suffer several significant drawbacks. For example, because the push-on cable adapters each have a limited cable diameter use range, multiple different sizes of cable adapters are required to cover many intended use ranges. The cable adapters may be difficult to push on.